09 Dec, 2008, Mabus wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
As slayn.net closes its doors the issue of where to go for our game presents itself. Should I home host? Should I accept the offers of free hosting that have been sent? Should we go with a VPS?

We don't have a large player base. I have always looked at the project as a place to try out my game-coding ideas and to write some text art. If I log in and see 10 people I am surprised, though I do not place my satisfaction on player numbers (but rather on how close the content and systems came to the designs, and to decent playability).

1) So if we decide to go with a VPS what exactly am I (a newbie at setting up a VPS server) looking at? I have set up home systems before, and am used to Linux shell work. I can google and ask questions with the best of them ( :wink: ) and am not afraid of reading manuals to find my way.

2) We need high RAM (500-600MB+), MySQL and Sun Java (hopefully 1.5) and Ant (for compiling ease). Will I be installing the Java, MySQL and Ant myself, or do they come with some services?

3) We tend to spike the CPU when starting up (for about 30 seconds), but it then settles rather rapidly. How big is this a concern on various VPS services?

4) Recommendations for VPS services and domain name registers are welcome. Cost and stability are issues.


Will likely be making a final decision with the next few days. Any comments, suggestions and general advice welcome.
09 Dec, 2008, Zeno wrote in the 2nd comment:
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That high of a RAM is going to cost a bit for a VPS. I get 128mb and I pay $10…
09 Dec, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 3rd comment:
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Mabus said:
1) So if we decide to go with a VPS what exactly am I (a newbie at setting up a VPS server) looking at?

Basically they're giving you a "machine" for all intents and purposes. They'll load up an OS, give you the root password, and you run with it. Occasionally if something freezes up they can reboot it for you, and might or might not charge for that.

Mabus said:
2) We need high RAM (500-600MB+), MySQL and Sun Java (hopefully 1.5) and Ant (for compiling ease). Will I be installing the Java, MySQL and Ant myself, or do they come with some services?

That sounds like a lot of RAM, and will cost you, but, well, yeah. You will probably have to install Java etc. yourself but that should be very easy if you're already familiar with setting up home systems. It's the same thing, after all, just over an ssh connection.

Mabus said:
3) We tend to spike the CPU when starting up (for about 30 seconds), but it then settles rather rapidly. How big is this a concern on various VPS services?

Shouldn't be a problem. They'll allocate CPU usage to you, and you'll use it, and that's pretty much that. I'd be pretty surprised if they charged you for CPU usage – most likely their package just caps how much you can use.
09 Dec, 2008, Mabus wrote in the 4th comment:
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Zeno said:
That high of a RAM is going to cost a bit for a VPS. I get 128mb and I pay $10…

I know.

I was looking at SWVPS LVPS-2 and LVPS-3 as examples, but am open for suggestions.
09 Dec, 2008, kiasyn wrote in the 5th comment:
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DavidHaley said:
Mabus said:
1) So if we decide to go with a VPS what exactly am I (a newbie at setting up a VPS server) looking at?

Basically they're giving you a "machine" for all intents and purposes. They'll load up an OS, give you the root password, and you run with it. Occasionally if something freezes up they can reboot it for you, and might or might not charge for that.


Most VPS providers offer console / force reboot services now (free).
09 Dec, 2008, Cratylus wrote in the 6th comment:
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Quote
Should I accept the offers of free hosting that have been sent?


I would not. For an empty/test mud, it's not a big deal. But
if you have an actual userbase, I wouldn't use a free host.
I just wouldn't feel comfortable with it.


Quote
I have set up home systems before, and am used to Linux shell work. I can google and ask questions with the best of them


If you can install and set up Ubuntu on a PC, then you're
ready for a VPS, IMO.

Quote
We need high RAM (500-600MB+), MySQL and Sun Java (hopefully 1.5) and Ant (for compiling ease).


This almost definitely means not-a-commercial-mud-host. On
the other hand, you really should not totally dismiss hosting this
at home. If you have a spare box lying around, and
broadband, it might be enough. And yes, I'd count on
installing that software yourself on a VPS. You really don't
want to rely on anyone for that stuff, nor do I think what you
would pay for that level of service is worth it.


Quote
Recommendations for VPS services and domain name registers are welcome. Cost and stability are issues.


registrar: I use godaddy. They're cheap, reliable, and all I need is the name res.

VPS: I use SWVPS. For $20/mo I get 20 gigs diskspace, 500 gig net
traffic, and 768m ram. They're pretty stable, only one outage I
noticed in the two months I've used them. Some kind of network
interruption for about 10 minutes.

It's a pretty good deal, but you should also crunch some
numbers for home hosting. You can buy a halfway decent
PC these days for 300-400 dollars, roughly 1.5 years of
VPS fees. This PC would be more likely to have better
specs than what the VPS would provide.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net
09 Dec, 2008, Lyanic wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
Quote
We need high RAM (500-600MB+)


So you're the one who used up all the memory on slayn! AHA! CAUGHT YOU!

Mind if I ask what uses up so much memory? Is it just a really large database? Even with that, though, it seems like you would've implemented some kind of dynamic load on-demand functionality by now…
09 Dec, 2008, Davion wrote in the 8th comment:
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I'm going to take a stab in the dark and say it's CoffeeMUD with lotsa content.
09 Dec, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 9th comment:
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Java doesn't use that much memory. My C++ MUD is really quite big and uses some 60mb of RAM. I rather doubt that simply moving to Java would cause a 10x increase in memory usage, unless the Java code were written to be particularly memory-unfriendly (or the VM is started with a minimum heap size that forces large allocation).
09 Dec, 2008, Davion wrote in the 10th comment:
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I wasn't basing the RAM usage on the fact that it's written in Java, but if you've played around with CoffeeMUD and throw in heaps of content, the ram usage tends to go up (especially with a not-so-dynamic wilderness :S) And I said CoffeeMUD because he said he required Java. It's the most popular of the Java bases. So, to clearify, not taking a jab at java. It's a nice cuppa joe :D.
09 Dec, 2008, The_Fury wrote in the 11th comment:
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How much ram does the game server actually consume Mabus. I host with Tectonic, 300 meg ram will set you back 15 a month, an additional 200 megs of ram will set you back an extra 8 a month. Extra ram on any package is charged at 4 cents per 1meg.

Oh the reason why i ask how much ram the game uses is because things like webservers and mail and the few other things to need really do not use a lot, i have on average over 200 megs of ram free on my 300 meg package, surely your mud is not eating that much, even with the java overheads.
09 Dec, 2008, Lyanic wrote in the 12th comment:
Votes: 0
Quote
if you've played around with CoffeeMUD and throw in heaps of content, the ram usage tends to go up (especially with a not-so-dynamic wilderness)


That was pretty much my thought. If you tried to load a one million room/location (pick a term) wilderness into memory all at once (instead of load on-demand), then I can see it eating up 600mb of RAM. It would also explain the spiking of CPU usage on startup - extracting all that stuff from the database to load into RAM all at once.
09 Dec, 2008, Mabus wrote in the 13th comment:
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DavidHaley said:
(or the VM is started with a minimum heap size that forces large allocation).

Bingo.
10 Dec, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 14th comment:
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Why start with such a large heap, though? Are you allocating a 600mb minimum heap? How much of that actually gets used? And why allocate it as a minimum rather than have a large enough maximum and let the heap grow as needed?

By the way, folks, 600mb is a lot of memory for a game to use, even with a million rooms floating around. Let's look at some numbers, just for fun…

Assuming 100k of data per room, that's only 100mb (100k * 1000k = 100000k = 100mb). 100mb is quite a bit less than 600mb, and 100k is an extraordinarily generous assumption for how much data is associated with a room. Assuming 8 bytes per reference, we could fit 10,000 references and still have 20k left-over for strings and whatnot. Surely it does not take that much to store a room.

So where is all this memory going?
10 Dec, 2008, Mabus wrote in the 15th comment:
Votes: 0
DavidHaley said:
Why start with such a large heap, though? Are you allocating a 600mb minimum heap? How much of that actually gets used? And why allocate it as a minimum rather than have a large enough maximum and let the heap grow as needed?

By the way, folks, 600mb is a lot of memory for a game to use, even with a million rooms floating around. Let's look at some numbers, just for fun…

Assuming 100k of data per room, that's only 100mb (100k * 1000k = 100000k = 100mb). 100mb is quite a bit less than 600mb, and 100k is an extraordinarily generous assumption for how much data is associated with a room. Assuming 8 bytes per reference, we could fit 10,000 references and still have 20k left-over for strings and whatnot. Surely it does not take that much to store a room.

So where is all this memory going?

I find that using -Xms288m -Xmx320m works really well for now, but as we expand I want some head room for content and systems I have planned.

While I appreciate the questions and comments on my usage of memory, I am more concerned with finding a suitable VPS host and domain register.
10 Dec, 2008, Lyanic wrote in the 16th comment:
Votes: 0
Quote
By the way, folks, 600mb is a lot of memory for a game to use, even with a million rooms floating around. Let's look at some numbers, just for fun…

Assuming 100k of data per room, that's only 100mb (100k * 1000k = 100000k = 100mb). 100mb is quite a bit less than 600mb, and 100k is an extraordinarily generous assumption for how much data is associated with a room. Assuming 8 bytes per reference, we could fit 10,000 references and still have 20k left-over for strings and whatnot. Surely it does not take that much to store a room.


I didn't bother to do the math on it earlier, but I actually wouldn't say 100k is EXTRAORDINARILY generous (it is a bit generous, though ;) - because I was considering more than just the room itself. There could be massive numbers of objects, NPCs and scripts (each of which creates an instance per NPC, with separate memory)? I've seen MUDs that have large wilderness systems and SQL backends do this (of course those were load on-demand types). Also, that would only be 6mil rooms instead of 1mil rooms - 1mil is not quite a bit less than 6mil. Magnitude, man… Magnitude!
10 Dec, 2008, Tyche wrote in the 17th comment:
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I find that using -Xms288m -Xmx320m works really well for now, but as we expand I want some head room for content and systems I have planned.
While I appreciate the questions and comments on my usage of memory, I am more concerned with finding a suitable VPS host and domain register.


It's my understanding that the VPS specs are the memory on the real machine allocated to that virtual machine, as opposed to a mud host which caps your process memory allocation. Obviously, while running under a VPS you can allocate as much memory as the OS itself can handle, assuming you configure it correctly. So you could easily run a 600mb mud on a 256mb VPS. It'll just do paging to disk. Now whether or not that would seriously affect your mud depends on the architecture of the game itself. I couldn't say with CoffeeMud because I never looked at it.
10 Dec, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 18th comment:
Votes: 0
Lyanic said:
I didn't bother to do the math on it earlier, but I actually wouldn't say 100k is EXTRAORDINARILY generous (it is a bit generous, though ;) - because I was considering more than just the room itself. There could be massive numbers of objects, NPCs and scripts (each of which creates an instance per NPC, with separate memory)? I've seen MUDs that have large wilderness systems and SQL backends do this (of course those were load on-demand types). Also, that would only be 6mil rooms instead of 1mil rooms - 1mil is not quite a bit less than 6mil. Magnitude, man… Magnitude!

Then figure those things into their own assumptions, not into the room assumption. If you assume that the 100k per room figure is the end-all be-all because it includes other things like characters and objects, then your work is done and you're using 100mb, not 600mb.

Anyhow, the point here is that it's important to do some basic homework when looking at memory usage, especially if trying to make a purchase decision. This isn't a purely academic discussion because the memory figure was quoted as a primary concern in selecting a VPS. To more accurately evaluate just how important that concern actually is, some data is needed.

Of course, Tyche's point is a good one to consider. The RAM figure that a VPS gives you is just for in-resident memory, and not a limit on virtual memory of processes. At this point, the memory size becomes a performance issue. Again, it is important to do some analysis to figure out how serious of a performance issue it is if an informed purchasing decision is to be made.
10 Dec, 2008, Lyanic wrote in the 19th comment:
Votes: 0
Quote
Anyhow, the point here is that it's important to do some basic homework when looking at memory usage, especially if trying to make a purchase decision. This isn't a purely academic discussion because the memory figure was quoted as a primary concern in selecting a VPS.


I was turning it into a purely academic discussion, though… In which case, magnitude wins! Also, I'm extremely bored…
10 Dec, 2008, The_Fury wrote in the 20th comment:
Votes: 0
As for registry i use http://www.namecheap.com/ they have 24/7 online help desk to help you sort out any issues you might have, as well as talk you though the set up process if you have never configured dns yourself.
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